“I can’t be made to believe that they’re just things. Books are friends. And sometimes enemies.”

It’s time for a new episode of The Virtual Memories Show!

“I’m dumber now at 44 than I was at 24. But when I get to 74 I was hoping to see all the stupid things I thought I knew in my margin notes.”

In this one, my brother Boaz Roth talks about rebuilding his library after a house fire, the joys of Bleak House, the lasting influence of Orwell’s essay, Inside the Whale, the Tolstoyan qualities of Lost, and what he’s learned over 18 years of teaching literature. Oh, and I offer up The Key To Quentin Tarantino’s Movies.

“The Heart of Darkness is the one book I hate the most to read, and it’s the one indispensable book I think everyone needs to read.”

You’ll also find commentary on the recent spate of superhero movies, the wonders of Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia, being a bad friend to your books, the shock of actually learning something from a David Brooks column, and how Christopher Nolan ripped off his own movie for that new Batman flick, among a pretty wide range of topics.

“Is there an inflection point where we stop worrying about perfecting the things we do for ourselves and start thinking about how we can make things perfect for others? Not just the people we love, but the people we’re connected to by paycheck.”

This is part 2 of The Bat Mitzvah Tapes, recorded during a trip to St. Louis in August for my niece’s bat mitzvah. Last week, I posted a conversation with Boaz’s mother-in-law, Lyn Ballard, about literary pilgrimages, what it’s like to read Huck Finn at the age of 5, and the books that made her who she is. Check that one out.

Credits: This episode’s music is Thunder Road by the Boss. I recorded the intro on a Blue Yeti mic into Audacity, and the conversation with was recorded on a pair of Blue Encore 100 mics, feeding into a Zoom H4N recorder. All editing was done in Garage Band. Have mics, will travel!